A glacier ran right up against the water, its surfaces going from white at the edges to a brilliant blue in its core. At the far end of the giant block of ice was a gravelly beach that rose up to a stony bluff. On top was a simple red building, with aluminum sides and a peaked, snow-covered roof.
“That’s the Drake Center for Environmental Studies,” Yuka said. “I’ve read a lot about it in my courses. They’re doing important research about our climate. Who would have thought life would come to this—I grew up near the North Pole, but now I’m at the very other end of the planet!”
As they watched, a figure emerged from the little red building and stood at the edge of the cliff. She waved at them as she brought a megaphone to her mouth. “Hello! I’m Dr. Antonia Drake. Welcome! You can bring your boat right up to the slip.”
“Oh, good,” Yuka said under his breath. “No shipwrecks this time.”
By the time he had guided the boat to the dock, and Joel and Nina had hopped to shore to tie it up tight, Dr. Drake had come down to greet them. “What a long journey you’ve had,” she said. “You must be so tired.”
“Not really!” Nina said. “We’re mostly just excited.”
“Who’s that?” Dr. Drake asked, looking at the small penguin by Nina’s feet.
“That’s Mae,” Joel explained. “And this is Ernest. They look like adults now, but they just finished molting. They’re the reason we started on this whole adventure!”
In fact, Ernest hadn’t quite finished molting. He still had a tuft of fluffy feathers on the back of his head, like an old balding man.
“They need a little help learning to socialize—” Mrs. Popper said, then she had to stop and concentrate on not falling into the sea as twenty-four penguins marched along the boat and hopped past her onto the dock, nearly knocking her over in the process.
Patch walked to the water’s edge, stared in, then walked back. She mustered enough courage to return to the edge, then lost her nerve again and waddled back. Patch walked to the edge again, but this time another penguin crowded in behind her to see and accidentally knocked her in! She made a gork as she bobbed on the surface, then dived away. Since no seals had eaten the first penguin yet, the others plopped in after her.
“They seem to be making themselves right at home, don’t they?” Dr. Drake said, laughing.
“All except our two little leftovers from the Penguin Pavilion,” Nina said.
Only Ernest and Mae remained on land.
They looked up at the Popper children.
They looked down at the cold sea.
Ernest headed into the galley and started making his little-chick oork sounds as he perused the cans of fish.
“I see what you mean,” Dr. Drake said, tapping her gloved finger against her lips as she considered the two odd young penguins. “They don’t seem to have made any progress getting used to being with other penguins. None at all.”
Mae waddled over to the ship’s radio and pecked the power button. She lay back and listened to the music, bouncing her flippers in rhythm with the beats.
HOMECOMING
ONCE THEY HAD finished filling their bellies with fish—“And squid,” Dr. Drake said, “that’s really their primary diet around here”—the penguins filed onto land. The Poppers and Dr. Drake lined up at the shore to watch. “This is a novel environment for the Popper Penguins,” Dr. Drake explained while Joel took notes. “They’re bound to be apprehensive about what they’ll find. We should expect them to be insecure and to stick near the boat for a long time.”
As they emerged from the surf, though, the Popper Penguins walked in the opposite direction, heading right into the wilds of Antarctica. “Oh!” said Dr. Drake.
Once the adult birds had marched past, Mae and Ernest made their sleepy sounds and toddled toward their nests in the boat. “Nope,” Nina said. “You’re not going to bed now—we just got here!”
She and Joel scooped up the young birds and headed after the line of penguins. Mrs. Popper and Dr. Drake and Yuka hustled to keep up. “This is most unexpected,” Dr. Drake said. “These particular birds have never been to Antarctica, though their forebears of course came from here. Nonetheless, they’re taking their ancestral routes over the ice. It’s as if no time has gone by!”
“Penguins are very smart,” Nina said, nodding. “You should have seen Mae at school. Can’t say she was much help on my spelling test, though.”
“The Popper Penguins seem to be an especially intelligent line,” Mrs. Popper added. “They were able to learn sophisticated dance moves, and their act toured theaters across the country.”
“Is it possible that the Popper Penguins have somehow passed along knowledge of where they came from, over all these years?” Yuka asked, rummaging through his backpack with his gloved hands to get his research notebook out.
Dr. Drake shook her head. “Preposterous. That would require them to have language. Not just simple communication, but the ability to capture verb tenses, to refer to places by name. Even the most advanced chimpanzees can’t do that.”
“I think there are a lot of things we might not know about penguins,” Nina said, patting Mae on the head. “I’m positive that she and Ernest have really in-depth conversations with each other.”
“Mostly about where their next can of tuna fish is coming from,” Joel added.
“I know that to a child’s eyes it can seem like animals have magical powers of communication, but the science doesn’t back that up,” Dr. Drake said as they marched.
Nina had been working her way ahead of the group. She whirled around, arms outstretched. “Then what do you say to that?” she asked.
They’d reached a rise in the icy field that looked out over a broad blue-white valley. It was covered in hundreds and hundreds of penguins, waddling to and fro. They clustered in
